Rep. Murphey Calls For Court Action

Sunday night, State Representative, Jason Murphey, called upon the Oklahoma Supreme Court to take up the matter of how the legislature attempted to skirt the constitutional rules for raising revenue. "Great harm.. will prevail if the court does not throw out the bill. If the Legislature gets away with reclassifying this tax into a fee, they can duplicate this abuse time and time again.  Freed from the constraints of the Constitution, next year's Legislature will have carte blanche to increase any and every tax that they desire as they struggle to cope with the budget deficit that will be carried forward from this year's budget."   Murphey is a senior member of the House. He is Chairman of the Government Modernization Committee. He also serves on: Appropriations and Budget A&B General Government General Government Oversight and Accountability Joint Committee on Appropriations and Budget

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  Murphey's thesis on the errors of the legislature were published at his Public Service website. We're posting highlights, but the full report is posted at https://hd31.org.

With the adoption of their HB 2433, Oklahoma's politicians voted to put a new sales tax on the purchase of new and used cars.    Vehicle purchases are already taxed with the excise tax. The excise tax is an "in lieu of" tax that replaces the sales tax. Legislators took the incredible and nearly unprecedented step of putting a sales tax on vehicle purchases without replacing the in lieu of tax. This means that there are now two taxes on cars: the first, an in lieu of tax known as the excise tax; the second is the sales tax which will now apply, notwithstanding the fact that the excise tax already applies and will continue to do so.  Keep in mind that Oklahomans already pay some of if not the highest annual vehicle registration fees in the nation.

"It's a punitive proposal that lawmakers hope will take over $110 million away from Oklahoma car buyers."   It is also an illegal proposal in my view, because it did not have enough votes in the Legislature to comply with the important provision that requires a supermajority (75%) of legislative votes for revenue raisers.    Lawmakers are daring the courts to throw out this illegal law. Doing so would create a 110 million dollar budget hole and some legislators appear to believe that the court will get the blame instead of the Legislature.    I think the people of Oklahoma are much too intelligent for this ruse and they will appreciate the courts for saving them from the illegal new tax.   Like House Bill 2433, Senate Bill 845 is also very dangerous in that it is clearly unconstitutional and will likely create a massive hole in the state budget, once it is rejected by the courts.    Throughout the session, legislators attempted to pass a cigarette tax. They were never able to get the constitutionally required constitutional super-majority in both Houses. This new tax would have placed Oklahoma's rate so much higher than surrounding states that it would have potentially driven millions of dollars to other states with much lower tax rates....  - Jason Murphey

from Sooner Politics.org - Editorial http://www.soonerpolitics.org/editorial/rep-murphey-calls-for-court-action